In August, MicroStrategy made the bold move of purchasing 21,454 Bitcoin to add to their treasury, spending $250 million. In doing so, CEO Michael Saylor stated that he views Bitcoin as a "dependable store of value and an attractive investment asset with more long-term appreciation potential than holding cash".
The next month MicroStrategy announced that they had doubled down on their conviction in Bitcoin and acquired an additional 16,796 Bitcoin, taking their total spend to $425 million. This move sent a clear message to businesses everywhere that Bitcoin is a valuable asset and can be a key part of a company's treasury.
Following in the footsteps of MicroStrategy, last week Square announced that they too had added Bitcoin to their treasury with the purchase of 4,709 Bitcoin for ~$50 million.
In this interview, I talk to Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy. We discuss their Bitcoin purchase, where his conviction in Bitcoin came from, Square buying Bitcoin and the process of adding Bitcoin to a public companies treasury.
Ethereum developers are eyeing January for the Berlin hard fork. The backwards-incompatible upgrade of the existing Eth 1.x blockchain was first set for July.
On this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors are once again joined by Ruben Somsen. But this time, the trio isn’t discussing one of Somsen’s own proposals but diving into a concept from research scientist and Lightning Network creator Tadge Dryja called “Utreexo.”
Whenever a new Bitcoin transaction is made, Bitcoin nodes use a UTXO set (the overview of all bitcoin in existence at any given time) to determine that the coins that are being spent really exist. This UTXO set is currently several gigabytes in size and continues to grow over time and there is no upper limit to how big it can potentially get.
Because Bitcoin nodes perform best and fastest if the UTXO set is kept in RAM (in particular when syncing a new node), and RAM is usually a relatively scarce resource for most computers, it would benefits a node’s performance if the UTXO set could be stored in a more compact format. This is the promise of Utreexo.
Utreexo would take all the UTXOs in existence and include them in a Merkle Tree, a data-structure consisting only of hashes. Aaron, Sjors and Ruben explain how the compact Utreexo structure could suffice in proving that a particular UTXO is included when a new transaction is made, and they discuss the potential benefits that could surface if this solution becomes available, as well as some of its potential tradeoffs.
Investors who say they lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in an alleged cryptocurrency fraud have had no luck persuading the police that there was in fact a crime committed.
Miranda Jo Davis overcame a difficult youth to become a devoted wife and mother, an achievement she credits to her strong Christian faith. Now, she works within her congregation as a counselor, a teacher and...yogini? That's right, Miranda is a master of the ancient exercises of yoga. And today, she joins Tatiana & Lauren to talk about her beliefs, relationships, what to look for in a church, and how she reconciled Eastern mysticism with Western Christian ritual. She also confronts misconceptions about her religion, and why she believes what many consider intolerance can instead be a path of love and acceptance.
About the Guest(s):
Miranda Jo Davis is an expert in the yoga world with over twenty years' experience. She owns a Christian yoga/Pilates studio, infusing scripture to shape her teaching. In ministry, Miranda is a biblical counselor, using God's word to implement heart change. She is a published Christian writer and featured on TV, radio, and print for education in Mind/Body wellness.
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*You have been listening to the Tatiana Show. This show may contain adult content, language, and humor and is intended for mature audiences. If that's not you, please stop listening. Nothing you hear on The Tatiana Show is intended as financial advice, legal advice, or really, anything other than entertainment. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Oh, and if you're hearing us on an affiliate network, the ideas and views expressed on this show are not necessarily those of the network you are listening on, or of any sponsors or any affiliate products you may hear about on the show.
As a financial adviser, you might feel pressured to know every answer to your clients’ portfolio needs. But you’ve got some burning questions about digital assets like bitcoin. Now’s your chance to ask: On Purpose podcast host and Onramp Invest CEO Tyrone Ross invites the public to CoinDesk’s first podcast live taping party and AMA […]
Preston Pysh, cofounder of The Investors Podcast Network, host of We Study Billionaires and a long time bitcoiner joins Brady. We discuss Preston's time flying in the military, then get into Bitcoin. We discuss the heap of bullish news for Bitcoin this year and then answer questions from the YouTube live chat. This was a great one!
Decentralized music app Audius announced Thursday that it will migrate its content management system over to Solana’s high-speed blockchain from an Ethereum sidechain operated by the POA Network that runs on a set of trusted validators. Audius occupies a similar space to popular music players like Pandora or Spotify, but it allows artists to set […]
Today's episode is the start of a new series about Bitcoin in Africa. I have been traveling to Zimbabwe and Botswana in February 2020 to find out if and how Bitcoin is known and used there. When I left the African continent at the beginning of March it was unclear how the pandemic is going to change the economical situation of countries that were already in a deep crisis like Zimbabwe or Nigeria and how it would affect the adoption of bitcoin in Subsaharan countries. With the upcoming episodes I want to give you insights into African nations such as Senegal, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa. This episodes topic is Zimbabwe. My guest is Miss Aurra Kawanzaruwa. She is a digipreneur and the principal of St. Anne's school in the country's capital Harare.
Current situation in ZimbabweMonetary repercussionsGovernments ban of EcoCashShortages of basic supply goodsCorruption and mismanagement Zimbabwean Lives Matter movementCoronavirus situationSchool shut down and distance learningHer first experience using bitcoinTranslating "Bitcoin Money" book to ShonaGetting into trouble for using BitcoinHow Zimbabweans use bitcoin
The New York Department of Financial Services expects all firms, including virtual currency businesses, to start assessing climate change-associated financial risks.
Tiff Macklem said Canada's digital dollar initiative is progressing past the experimental phase and that the G7 needs to coordinate on digital currencies.
The president's campaign website was briefly compromised on Tuesday, as hackers looked to fleece cryptocurrency from unsuspecting supporters in the final days before the 2020 election.
Josh returns to the co-host chair just in time for a fantastic talk with Grant Blaisdell talking a huge variety of subjects in the blockchain space. Grant left the US for his father's homeland of Poland to help found Coinfirm, an analytics company that's on the bleeding edge of the blockchain space. He talks about why he started the project, what they specialize in, and how the company's projects help users with an increasingly regulated space. He talks the hot crypto topic of DeFi and how it helps democratize economics. He talks his love of the music industry and how he uses cryptocurrency & blockchain as a marketing, distribution & engagement tool for music and how it can work in tandem with existing promotional practices. He also discusses his interest in space travel and utilization, and how it represents the next stage in data security and economics. A wonderful conversation covering a huge variety of subjects...listen now!
About the Guest:
Grant has been creating ventures at the intersection of new technologies and media between the US to Central Europe since his late teens. An early innovator in applying blockchain technology to various industries, companies Grant has co-founded include the leading Blockchain Analytics and AML company Coinfirm and the digital asset marketplace for the Space industry Copernic Space. As a lifelong musician and hip hop artist known as GB Savant, Grant also applies his technological work to his music with upcoming projects such as Mr. Crypto.
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*You have been listening to the Tatiana Show. This show may contain adult content, language, and humor and is intended for mature audiences. If that's not you, please stop listening. Nothing you hear on The Tatiana Show is intended as financial advice, legal advice, or really, anything other than entertainment. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Oh, and if you're hearing us on an affiliate network, the ideas and views expressed on this show are not necessarily those of the network you are listening on, or of any sponsors or any affiliate products you may hear about on the show.
Danny Diekroger is a software engineer at CashApp and Bitgo before that. He has been writing some great threads educating about how bitcoin works and why we need it. He's working on compiling those into a short book. In this one we get into Danny's background as a pro baseball player, his evolution as a bitcoin builder, cover a few bitcoin education topics like Replace By Fee and Taproot and talk about why we need Bitcoin, especially in this moment.
China’s banking and digital payment giants are using blockchain technology to add transparency to charity organizations' donation distribution networks.
The Bail Project, Chicago Community Bond Fund and Nashville Community Bail Fund take cryptocurrency donations not just in BTC, but also ETH and even BAT.
For this episode of the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast, host CK sits down with Max Hillebrand (@HillebrandMax), a prolific Bitcoin education and member of the Bitcoin privacy research group zkSNACKs. The pair dive into updates on Wasabi Wallet (ZKSnacks’ primary product) and discuss higher-level introductions to topics that are essential for all Bitcoiners and advocates of liberty.
Specific topics discussed include:
Wasabi Wallet, Bitcoin mixing updates
Chaincase creating a mobile client for Wasabi CoinJoins
Explaining crypto anarchy
Explaining property rights
Discussing Wasabi’s growth
All of the different aspects of Wasabi Wallet that make it a fantastic privacy wallet
A shoutout to Andrew Chow for the HWI integration
Explaining how Chaincase is creating a mobile client for Wasabi
Chain Reaction Host Tom Shaughnessy hosts Diane, the co-founder of DODO. They discuss DODO, the proactive market maker that's competing with Uniswap and others AMMs. DODO has $100M in its pools, but Diane explains why it's much more efficient vs peers.
This is a promoted article provided by bitcoinmix.org.
Bitcoin mixers are services that mix BTC from different sources to obscure their transaction history. Using these services, Bitcoiners can protect their privacy and keep prying eyes from assessing the history of their funds or other information about them.
Bitcoin addresses are pseudonymous, and don’t inherently reveal the specific real-world identity of their owners, but they can be traced back to exchanges or other points at which an owner may have revealed their real-world identity. Blockchain analysis techniques are capable of deriving the amount of BTC someone holds, the things they’ve used their funds to buy or other information based on Bitcoin addresses.
Why Use A Bitcoin Mixer?
There are many reasons some Bitcoin users might not want the history of their BTC to be discovered. For instance, the revelation that a user holds a large amount of funds might make them a target of theft or scam. Or those living under repressive regimes might want to ensure that their financial activity is free from censure.
Mixing services can obscure this analysis in a variety of ways. Proposals for bitcoin mixers have included centralized parties that promise to mix coins, decentralized platforms, Lightning Network-style payment channels and projects that use privacy-focused altcoins as intermediary mixing steps.
Chaumian CoinJoin mixers, for instance, see groups of users send the same amount of BTC to a new Bitcoin address that they control and then merge all of the individual transactions into one main transaction. Users then take the same amount of BTC they originally sent back out, and now they have effectively obscured the previous activity of their bitcoin. Other services charge fees that are then used to financially motivate people to offer their own bitcoin to be mixed, thus improving the mixing efficacy.
Introducing Bitcoinmix.org
Bitcoinmix.org uses algorithms to shuffle users’ bitcoin and secure their identity. Users can input the address to which they would like their BTC forwarded and input a custom time delay before mixing. The service does not store any logs to protect user anonymity and does not collect personal data. The service is completely automated, so it’s not necessary to put your trust in a person.
By making it convenient, secure and effective to mix your bitcoin, bitcoinmix.org is adding an oft-needed privacy layer to the original cryptocurrency network.
Daily trading volume on Uniswap surged by over 1,200% to a record $2.04 billion, surpassing the previous record high of $953.59 million registered on Sept. 1 by a big margin.
Nasdaq-listed bitcoin mining company Marathon Patent Group signed a contact to purchase an additional 10,000 Antminer S-19 Pro miners from Bitmain, according to a Monday morning release.
While neither major Presidential candidate is campaigning on a crypto platform, who they appoint to head up federal agencies will shape policy for years to come.
The U.S. government is pursuing a civil forfeiture claim on the more than 300,000 units of the tether (USDT) cryptocurrency said to have been stolen earlier this year.
The motion, filed by Brian Klein, claims the indictment of Griffith doesn't "specify any alleged overt facts," and contains no actual allegation of fact.
Adoption by criminal enterprises is evidence of the product/market fit for censorship-resistant tech and an indicator of whether innovation will see usage in the non-criminal world.
On this very special episode of Proof of Love, Tatiana & Lauren talk about patrons vs. "sugar daddies" and share some of their own stories about older men who have given them their financial and emotional support over the years. Tatiana opens up about a recent, deeply negative experience that has affected her business, emotional health and personal relationships. She talks candidly about exactly what happened and the toll it's taken on her personally and professionally, and she & Lauren talk about how to avoid such situations in the future.
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*You have been listening to Proof of Love. This show may contain adult content, language, and humor and is intended for mature audiences. If that's not you, please stop listening. Nothing you hear on Proof of Love is intended as financial advice, legal advice, therapy or really, anything other than entertainment. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Oh, and if you're hearing us on an affiliate network, the ideas and views expressed on this show, are not necessarily those of the network you are listening on, or of any sponsors or any affiliate products you may hear about on the show.
From Brazil to Argentina to Turkey, bitcoin priced in local currencies is reaching all time highs. But is this a story of bitcoin succeeding, fiat failing or both?
The Fed and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network want to lower the threshold for reporting financial transactions and make sure crypto is included.
Bitcoiners have to endure a lot of criticism from those who are still skeptical of the digital asset. A lot of the time, this skepticism comes from misunderstandings about the true nature of what the network is capable of. Headlines like “Bitcoin Was Hacked,” “Bitcoin Is Used By Criminals,” and “Bitcoin Is Bad For The Environment” are examples of the common misunderstandings that Bitcoiners have to disprove to their colleagues, friends and family whenever the topic comes up.
One such argument that may be difficult to counter is the fact that bitcoin is a very young asset. It was introduced just 11 years ago and many naysayers dismiss Bitcoin altogether because they see it as a new experiment or fad that will die out, like MySpace or Beanie Babies. But what if there is a very sound counterpoint that may convince the cynics that bitcoin is indeed on its way to becoming a true, tested and mature asset?
Historic Market Hours And Other Factors To Consider
We can think about the maturity of an asset through the lens of the hours it has been publicly traded, as opposed to the number of years it has existed on the market.
Let’s take the beloved S&P 500 for example. First, we need to consider the date it began trading and how many days out of the year it usually trades for. The S&P 500 was founded on March 4, 1957, while trading hours occurred only on Mondays through Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and are closed on holidays.
This would equate to 5.5 hours of trading on a normal business day with 252 total trading days in a year. However, we cannot calculate the number of hours until we address how market hours have been changed over the course of history.
It wasn’t until October 1974 that the exchanges began operating from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., which would allow markets to trade for six hours on regular business days. And then again, in 1984, the market hours were switched to the current times of 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., which would allot 6.5 hours per trading day.
Types Of Days That Are Excluded
Leap Year days, half days (this depends upon which day of the week certain holidays occur), closings due to catastrophic events (such as September 11, 2001 and the spread of COVID-19) are not factored into our calculations.
Something to keep in mind when discussing the benefits of bitcoin as compared to equity markets is the year-round, 24/7 availability to trade the digital asset. If you have access to a bitcoin exchange, you are able to buy and sell your bitcoin whenever it is convenient. Trade halts in the middle of the day do not keep bitcoin from being traded. Even if all of the bitcoin exchanges in your area were to close up shop, you would still have access to trade through peer-to-peer exchanges. There is always someone around the world willing to trade bitcoin. In contrast, trading stocks requires a broker and specific hours of operation.
The last thing to mention is the Cowles Index, created by Alfred Cowles, who was an economist and founder of the Cowles Commission. In 1938, Cowles felt it necessary to track the performance of the average investor with a stock market index. We will not include the trading hours of the Cowles Index in our calculations, but felt it necessary to mention because it is the predecessor of the S&P 500.
With all of this in mind, we may now calculate a rough estimate of the number of hours for which the S&P 500 has allowed trading since its official inception in 1957. We will then compare the trading time of the index with bitcoin’s trading time.
Calculating the S&P 500’s Total Market Hours Vs. Bitcoin’s
The span between March 4, 1957 to September 30, 1974 equals 4,449 workdays. Multiply 4,449 workdays by 5.5 hours per day and we get 24,469.5 hours.
The span from October 1, 1974 to December 30, 1983 would equal 2,321 workdays. Multiply 2,321 workdays by 6 hours and we get 13,926 hours.
The span from January 2, 1984 to October 30, 2020 would equal 9,207 workdays. Multiply 9,207 workdays by 6.5 hours and we get 59,845.5 hours.
If we add all of those hours up together, then we get a total of 98,241 trading hours for the S&P 500 throughout its history (which does not factor in half days or closings due to catastrophic events, as noted above).
Now, let’s apply that same math to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s network was launched in January 2009 but did not start experiencing price discovery until it was traded on BitcoinMarket.com (no longer in operation) on March 17, 2010. Bitcoin trades 24/7 every day of the year, so the calculations are a lot easier to determine. The number of days from March 17, 2010 to October 30, 2020 (we will use the same end date as we do for the S&P 500) gives us 3,881 days. We can multiply the total days by 24 (hours in a day) to get 93,144 total hours of trading time for bitcoin.
This would project Bitcoin to overtake the S&P 500’s trading hours by July 18, 2021. Bitcoin will have more trading hours than one of the most highly-respected indexes of all time in a little over a year after it’s third subsidy halving. We can also apply this type of math to other markets as well and project when Bitcoin will overtake the amount of hours for which each of these markets have traded.
Stealth Date Calculations
“Stealth dates” are the nearest projected dates that Bitcoin overtakes the amount of trading hours for any particular market. For this exercise, trading hours are calculated from the date of each market’s inception up to the date of October 30, 2020.
Please note that we are also not calculating the number of hours during which futures are traded and are not including after-hours trading.
All listed dates are projections and are not entirely accurate because we are not taking into account leap years, half days that occur throughout the year, catastrophic events or other unique circumstances.
Bitcoin (BTC)
Year founded: 2009 (price discovery began in 2010)
Total trading hours: 93,144 hours
DOW Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)
Year founded: May 26, 1896
Total trading hours: 182,127.5
Stealth date: April 25, 2033*
Total hours until stealth date: 109,440
Stealth date completion percentage: 46%
S&P 500 (^GSPC)
Year founded: March 4, 1957
Total trading hours: 98,241
Stealth date: July 18, 2021**
Total hours until stealth date: 6,264
Stealth date completion percentage: 93%
NYSE Composite (^NYA)
Year founded: December 31, 1965
Total trading hours: 80,272.5
Stealth date: April 16, 2019
Total hours until stealth date: -12,871.5
Stealth date completion percentage: 116%
NASDAQ Composite (^IXIC)
Year founded: February 5, 1971
Total trading hours: 78,677.5
Stealth date: March 8, 2019
Total hours until stealth date: -14,466.5
Stealth date completion percentage: 118%
Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index (^W5000)
Year founded: 1974
Total trading hours: 74,662.5
Stealth date: September 21, 2018
Total hours until stealth date: -18,481.5
Stealth date completion percentage: 124%
There is, of course, the argument that volume has a huge effect on the maturity of an asset and this is true. Bitcoin’s volume will need to increase and be verified through better methods before it is able to truly become a mature asset. In many ways bitcoin is still discovering how and where it fits within our world. But knowing that bitcoin, at the time of this writing, has traded around 93 percent of the same hours as the S&P 500 has traded within its lifetime, allows everyone inside and outside of the Bitcoin space to reconsider how far along we really are. At the very least, skeptics will be hard-pressed to find a rebuttal against these numbers.
Special thanks to @BitcoinTina and my sister Peri for helping me complete this piece.
Calculating Projected Stealth Dates:
*Calculating the projected stealth date for the DOW Jones Industrial Average:
8,760 = Number of hours in the year
93,144 = Total number of hours bitcoin has traded since inception
1,638 = Trading hours for equity markets per year (9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekdays excluding holidays)
182,127.5 = Total number of hours the DOW has traded since inception
We will now solve for x:
8,760x + 93,144 = 1,638x + 182,127.5
-93,144. -93,144
8760x = 1,638x + 88,983.5
-1,638x -1,638x
7,122x = 88,983.5
/7,122 /7,122
x = 12.494
Convert to days
12.494 * 365 = 4,560.31
Next step would be to add 4,560 days to October 30, 2020 which would equal April 25, 2033.
**Calculating the projected stealth date for the S&P 500:
8,760 = Number of hours in the year
93,144 = Total number of hours bitcoin has traded since inception
1,638 = Trading hours for equity markets per year (9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekdays excluding holidays)
98,241 = Total number of hours the S&P 500 has traded since inception
We will now solve for x:
8,760x + 93,144 = 1,638x + 98,241
-93,144 -93,144
8,760x = 1,638x + 5,097
-1,638x -1,638x
7,122x = 5,097
/7,122 /7,122
x = 0.715
Convert to days
0.715 * 365 = 260.975
Next step would be to add 261 days to October 30, 2020 which would equal July 18, 2021.
On this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors discuss “Assume UTXO,” a proposal and project by Chaincode Labs alumnus James O’Beirne.
One of the biggest, if not the biggest, bottlenecks for scaling Bitcoin is initial block download: the time it takes for a Bitcoin node to synchronize with the Bitcoin network, as it needs to process all historic transactions and blocks in order to construct the latest UTXO-set: the current state of bitcoin-ownership.
Aaron and Sjors explain some of the ways sync-time has been sped up over time. First, sync-time was improved through “Headers First” synchronization, which ensures that new Bitcoin nodes don’t waste time validating (potentially) weaker blockchains. In recent years, sync-time has been improved with “Assume Valid,” an optional shortcut that lets nodes skip signature verification of older transactions, instead trusting that the Bitcoin Core development process in combination with the resource-expensive nature of mining offers a reliable version of transaction history.
Finally, they explain how the security assumptions underpinning Assume Valid could be extended to allow for the potential future upgrade Assume UTXO to offer new Bitcoin Core users a speedy solution to get up to speed with the Bitcoin network, sacrificing a minimal amount of security during the initial bootstrapping phase.
Helpful links for following along wit the episode:
Laws like the Bank Secrecy Act, which turns 50 this week, have helped stop money laundering and terrorism. But KYC and AML requirements have served to harm the world's neediest through higher costs and reduced services.
We talk to Philip Gradwell, chief economist at the blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis, to discuss the five indicators every crypto trader should track.
Digital asset manager Grayscale Investments has acquired an additional $300 million in cryptocurrencies over the last 24 hours. See also: Grayscale Tells SEC Its Bitcoin Trust Rose $1.6B Over Six Months
News broke on the morning of October 21 2020, that PayPal would grant its users the ability to purchase, sell and hold bitcoin within its app.
PayPal’s stock price rose 4.65 percent on the news, and the bitcoin price continued its rise from $11,400 to $12,700 by midday.
There is no denying that PayPal is a monster in the mobile and digital payment processing space. Since the lockdowns stemming from the spread of COVID-19, consumers and businesses are transacting with cash less often, and more often paying for goods with 1s and 0s from their mobile devices. It only makes sense that PayPal would allow its users the ability to buy and own the world’s first (to some enthusiasts, the world’s only) digital and decentralized global currency: bitcoin.
But what does PayPal bring to the table for Bitcoin that Jack Dorsey’s company — Square — hasn’t already with its rapidly-growing financial app Cash App? Cash App has offered customers bitcoin since the summer of 2019, and the platform has seen incredible growth.
“Cash App delivered $1.2 billion in revenue alone and $281 million of gross profit during the second quarter, an increase of 361% and 167% year-over-year, respectively,” according to ZDNet. “In total, Cash App generated $54 million in transaction-based revenue over the quarter.”
Additionally, Cash App’s parent company, Square, announced on October 8, 2020, that it had allocated about 2 percent of the cash on its balance sheet to bitcoin — a total investment of $50 million or 4,708 bitcoin at an average price of roughly $10,620. This investment has grown by over 15 percent since October 8 and is worth more than $57 million at the time of this writing.
Still, Cash App pales in comparison to PayPal, as it has only 30 million active users, Roughly 10 percent of PayPal’s monthly customer base.
But this isn’t the only difference between Cash App and PayPal.
The most noticeable difference in the two companies’ Bitcoin offerings is in PayPal users’ inability to withdraw bitcoin from their PayPal account to another bitcoin wallet. CashApp, on the other hand, allows its users to withdraw their bitcoin, and Cash App even covers the network fees of the withdrawal by batching the transactions. Of course, in compliance with U.S financial law, Cash App is required to get information about its users (including your name, SSN, picture of your driver’s license, etc). But once Cash App has that information, it allows them to withdraw and transact their bitcoin freely. PayPal announcement didn’t include support for this “feature.” You can buy bitcoin, hold it and sell it in their app — that’s it.
For many, this may not seem like a very significant difference. They may even prefer to just hold bitcoin in their PayPal account. Obviously, PayPal has a trusted consumer base: 300 million-plus people trust its services each month. So, it would be safe to assume that its customers will trust it to hold their bitcoin for them.
For many Bitcoiners, though, this is an insufferable difference. The word “insufferable” may not even be strong enough — let me explain:
The core thesis of Bitcoin (as stated in Satoshi Nakamoto’s infamous white paper), and the whole reason for Bitcoin’s decentralized proof-of-work consensus mechanism, is to empower the bitcoin owner with sovereign control over their funds. The word “immutable” is attributed to Bitcoin for this reason — if you’d like to transact your bitcoin, nobody can stop or “mute” your transaction. This is an incredible characteristic, unique to Bitcoin.
So, the fact that PayPal doesn’t allow its customers to withdraw their bitcoin is completely antithetical to the Bitcoin ethos. Bitcoiners will likely balk at and attack this fact — much like a swarm of hornets protects its queen from any and all bad actors potentially aiming to taint the purity of the hive’s bloodline.
Will PayPal follow Square’s lead and allocate a percentage of its $10 billion-plus of cash on hand into bitcoin? It only seems logical that it would hold a reserve of the global asset it now aims to hold for their customers. Time will tell, as all eyes remain set on consumer-access to bitcoin following the release of this news.
It can be safely concluded that PayPal offering its more than 300 million customers bitcoin is a bullish event. As is often stated, “There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin.” As mainstream exposure to bitcoin increases, so does mainstream demand for bitcoin.
This is a guest post by Adam Ortolf. Opinions expressed are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
Todays guest is Gloria Zhao, she is a Bitcoin Core developer, former president of "Blockchain at Berkeley" and will finish her Computer Science studies at the end of 2020. We discuss how Bitcoin and blockchain technologies are seen by her fellow college students, why she chose to work on Bitcoin only instead of all the other Silicon Valley stuff and blockchain projects that are around.
"Privacy and censorship resistance should be the default. We can't keep measuring technologies or applications based on how convenient they are or how cheap they are.We need to start thinking about how private they are." - Gloria Zhao
Topics:
Career expectations for college students in Silicon ValleyBlockchain education at the college Why Bitcoin, not blockchainHow she escaped the mindset of Silicon ValleyHow to become a Bitcoin Core developerHer Chinese roots Why privacy is so important in the digital era
